My Recollections Part 15

During my rendering Heilbronn was moved to tears. I heard her sigh through her sobs, "It is my life ... that is my life."

This time, as ever has been the case, the sequel showed that I was right to wait, to take time in choosing an artist who would have to live my work.

The day after he heard _Manon_, Carvalho signed the contract.

The following year, after more than eighty consecutive performances, I learned of Marie Heilbronn's death!...

I preferred to stop the performances rather than to see it sung by another. Some time afterwards the Opera-Comique went up in flames.

_Manon_ was not given again for ten years. Dear unique Sybil Sanderson took up the work at the Opera-Comique and she played in the two-hundredth performance.

A glory was reserved for me on the five hundredth performance. _Manon_ was sung by Marguerite Carre. A few months ago this captivating, exquisite artist was applauded on the evening of the 740th performance.

In pa.s.sing I want to pay tribute to the beautiful artistes who have taken the part. I will mention Mlles. Mary Garden, Geraldine Farrar, Lina Cavalieri, Mme. Brejean-Silver, Mlles. Courtenay, Genevieve Vix, Mmes. Edvina and Nicot-Vauchelet, and still other dear artistes. They will pardon me if all their names do not come to my grateful pen at the moment.

The Italian Theatre (Maurel's Season), as I have already said, put on _Herodiade_ two weeks after the first performance of _Manon_, with the following admirable artists: Fides Devries, Jean de Reszke, Victor Maurel, Edouard de Reszke.

As I write these lines in 1911, _Herodiade_ continues its career at the Theatre-Lyrique de la Gaite (under the management of the Isola brothers) who put on the work in 1903 with the famous Emma Calve. The day after the first performance of _Herodiade_ in Paris I received these lines from our ill.u.s.trious master, Gounod:

Sunday, February 3, '84.

My dear Friend:

The noise of your success with _Herodiade_ reaches me; but I lack that of the work itself, and I shall go to hear it as soon as possible, probably Sat.u.r.day. Again new congratulations, and

Good luck to you, CH. GOUNOD.

Meanwhile _Marie Magdeleine_ went on its career in the great festivals abroad. I recall the following letter which Bizet wrote me some years before with deep pride.

Our school has not produced anything like it. You give me the fever, brigand.

You are a proud musician, I'll wager.

My wife has just put _Marie Magdeleine_ under lock and key!

That detail is eloquent, is it not?

The devil! You've become singularly disturbing.

As to that, believe me that no one is more sincere in his admiration and in his affection than your,

BIZET.

That is the testimony of my excellent comrade and affectionate friend, George Bizet--a friend and comrade who would have remained steadfast had not blind destiny torn him from us in the full bloom of his prodigious and marvelous talent.

Still in the dawn of life when he pa.s.sed from this world, he could have compa.s.sed everything in the art to which he devoted himself with so much love.

CHAPTER XVI

FIVE COLLABORATORS

As is my custom, I did not wait for _Manon's_ fate to be decided before I began to plague my publisher, Hartmann, to wake up and find me a new subject. I had hardly finished my plaint, to which he listened in silence with a smile on his lips, than he went to a desk and took out five books of ma.n.u.script written on the yellow paper which is well known to copyists. It was _Le Cid_, an opera in five acts by Louis Gallet and Edouard Blatt. As he offered me the ma.n.u.script, Hartmann made this comment to which I had nothing to reply, "I know you. I had foreseen this outburst."

I was bound to be pleased at writing a work based on the great Corneille's masterpiece, the libretto due to the fellow workers I had had in the compet.i.tion for the Imperial Opera, _La Coup de roi de Thule_, in which, as I have said, I failed to win the first prize.

I learned the words by heart, as I always did. I wanted to have it constantly in my thoughts, without being compelled to keep the text in my pocket, so as to be able to work at it away from home, in the streets, in society, at dinner, at the theater, anywhere that I might find time. I get away from a task with difficulty, especially when, as in this case, I am gripped by it.

As I worked I remembered that d'Ennery sometime before had entrusted to me an important libretto and that I had found a very moving situation in the fifth act. While the words did not appear sufficiently worth while to lead me to write the music, I wanted to keep this situation. I told the famous dramatist and I obtained his consent to interpolate this scene in the second act of _Le Cid_. Thus d'Ennery became a collaborator. This scene is where Chimene finds that Rodriguez is her father's murderer.

Some days later, as I was reading the romance of Guilhem de Castro, I came across an incident which became the tableau where the consoling apparition appears to the Cid as he is in tears--the second tableau in the third act. I was inspired to this by the apparition of Jesus to Saint Julien the Hospitalier.

I continued my work on _Le Cid_ wherever I happened to be, as the performances of _Manon_ took me to the provincial theaters where they alternated it with _Herodiade_ both in France and abroad.

I wrote the ballet for _Le Cid_ at Ma.r.s.eilles during a rather long stay there. I was very comfortably established in my room, at the Hotel Beauveau, with its long latticed windows which looked out on the old port. The prospect was actually fairylike. This room was decorated with remarkable panels and mirrors, and when I expressed my astonishment at seeing them so well preserved, the proprietor told me that the room was an object of special care because Paganini, Alfred de Musset and George Sand had all lived there once upon a time. The cult of memories sometimes reaches the point of fetis.h.i.+sm.

It was spring. My room was scented with bunches of carnations which my friends in Ma.r.s.eilles sent me every day. When I say friends, the word is too weak; perhaps it is necessary to go to mathematics to get the word, and even then?

The friends in Ma.r.s.eilles heaped upon me consideration, attention and endless kindness. That is the country where they sweeten the coffee by placing it outside on the balcony, for the sea is made of honey!

Before I left the kind hospitality of this Phocean city, I received the following letter from the directors of the Opera, Ritt and Gailhard:

"My dear Friend,

"Can you set the day and hour for your reading of Le Cid?

"In friends.h.i.+p,

"E. Ritt."

But I had brought from Paris keen anguish about the distribution of the parts. I wanted the sublime Mme. Fides Devries to create the part of Chimene, but they said that since her marriage she no longer wanted to appear on the stage. I also depended on my friends Jean and Edouard de Reszke, who came to Paris especially to talk about _Le Cid_. They were aware of my plans for them. How many times I climbed the stairs of the Hotel Scribe where they lived!

At last the contracts were signed and finally the reading took place as the Opera requested.

As I speak of the ballet in _Le Cid_ I remember I heard the motif, which begins the ballet, in Spain. I was in the very country of _Le Cid_ at the time, living in a modest inn. It chanced that they were celebrating a wedding and they danced all night in the lower room of the hotel.

Several guitars and two flutes repeated a dance tune until they wore it out. I noted it down. It became the motif I am writing about, a bit of local color which I seized. I did not let it get away. I intended this ballet for Mlle. Rosita Mauri who had already done some wonderful dances at the Opera. I even owed several interesting rhythms to the famous dancer.

The land of the Magyars and France have been joined at all times by bonds of keen, cordial sympathy. It was not a surprise, therefore, when the Hungarian students invited forty Frenchmen--I was one--to go to Hungary for festivities which they intended to give in our honor.

We started--a joyous caravan--one beautiful evening in August for the banks of the Danube, Francois Coppee, Leo Delibes, Georges Clairin, Doctors Pozzi and Albert Rodin, and many other comrades and charming friends. Then, some newspaper men went along. Ferdinand de Lesseps was at our head to preside over us, by right of name if not by fame. Our ill.u.s.trious compatriot was nearly eighty at the time. He bore the weight of years so lightly that for a moment one would have thought he was the youngest in the lot.

We started off in uproarious gaiety. The journey was one uninterrupted flow of jests and humorous wit, intermingled with farce and endless pleasantries.

The restaurant car was reserved for us. We did not leave it all night and our sleeping car was absolutely unoccupied.

As we went through Munich, the Orient Express stopped for five minutes to let off two travelers, a man and a woman, who, we did not know how, had contrived to squeeze into a corner of the dining car and who had calmly sat through all our follies. As they left the train, they made in a foreign accent this rather sharp remark, "Those distinguished persons seem rather common." We certainly did not intend to displease that puritanical pair and we never overstepped the bounds of joviality and fun.